After

Mikey opened his eyes to see that dim fluorescent lights had replaced the gentle sunlight on Sandy’s porch. He noticed the taste of coffee on his tongue. The only coffee he had had in days came from Sandra.

“Hey there, look who’s awake.” Someone else was holding his hands instead of his new friend. It was a plump older nurse who had a look like she had not expected to be seen. “Sorry to bother you, sweetie. I was just adjusting your bedding. But looks like you’ll be going home soon.” Mikey smiled confusedly at her. She scurried away to call the doctor.

Mikey looked around him as his heart sank in his chest. He was back in the hospital. He had promised himself that he would never come back, and there he was. His memory flashed with the last sights he could recall before the Square: the heat of a blinding spotlight from the floor of the stage, Dotty Doyle and Senator Pruce’s faces hiding irritation, someone lifting him.

Searching his memory, he saw Bree’s frightened face above his. She had carried him off the stage. She had had to carry him again—like she always did. He had let her down. She had given her life for the campaign, and he had killed it with his weakness. His failure. If anyone could save the campaign now, it was Bree. But he knew too much damage had been done. He laughed at himself with wry derision. He had wanted the campaign to end.

Before long, the nurse returned with a doctor who must have been near the end of his long career. His chipped nameplate read “P. Shelley.” While the nurse checked Mikey’s vitals and helped him dress, Dr. Shelley told Mikey what everyone in town already knew. Generalized anxiety disorder. Insomnia. And what only Mikey had known. The struggle that hadn’t been presentable: extreme exhaustion, severe dehydration, dissociative symptoms, high blood alcohol levels. Dr. Shelley had Mikey sign some forms he didn’t care to read and then continued on to his next patient. Watching Dr. Shelley walk away, Mikey noticed that the linoleum floors were just the same as they were five years earlier. So was he.

The old nurse explained Mikey’s prescriptions to him and advised him against alcohol consumption with the patient exasperation of a high school guidance counselor. Mikey nodded and waited for her to finish. Her warning was unnecessary. The taste of coffee had cleared way for the taste of bile in his throat. After remembering the feeling of vomit pouring through his locked teeth, he wasn’t going to drink again anytime soon.

The nurse walked him out to the lobby to retrieve his personal effects. Mikey could hear a caller shouting at the receptionist through the landline. The receptionist gave Mikey a friendly smile and handed him a large plastic bag with his watch, phone, and wallet. Taking out his things, Mikey saw the visitor log through the bag’s clear plastic. A hospital this size normally didn’t have many visitors, but the same name was written for every day that week: Bree Dobson. Mikey’s stomach twisted into a knot of guilt.

Mikey turned on his phone out of habit. No one had called. Not even his parents. Relieved, he turned his phone back off. He wasn’t talking to anyone. The nurse helped him close the clasp of his watch. He didn’t need her to, but he appreciated her trying to help. “Thank you, Ms… I’m sorry I didn’t get your name.”

“Silvia,” she said. Mikey gave her a familiar smile. “Thank you, Silvia. For everything.”

When he was almost out the waiting room door, Silvia called to him. “Hey sweetie…” She beckoned him back and lowered her voice to a whisper. Standing closer to her, he could smell cigarette smoke on her scrubs. “If you don’t mind me asking, what was that song you kept singing?”

“Um…I don’t remember. Was I singing? Sorry about that.”

“No, no. It’s okay. I was just curious. You kept singing to yourself while you were out. I thought I almost recognized the song. It was something like, ‘If you’re not feeling happy today, just put on a smiling face…’” Silvia didn’t have any idea of what that song meant.

Mikey intended to keep it that way. “I have no idea. Sorry.”

“Oh, it’s okay, hon. Now you go home and get some rest.” She gave him a kind squeeze on the arm.

He left the hospital with the sinking feeling that he would be back soon. He had thought he had handled his mental health—closed the file and checked the box for that part of his life. Apparently, it was a problem he would never solve. Walking to his car, he fought to keep the refrain of Sandy’s song from circling his mind.

He forgot it for a moment when he opened his car door and the heat almost knocked him out again. He should have remembered what a warm Mason County fall did to a locked car. When the song started to start up again, he turned on the radio. The station had been on public radio for years, but he turned it to the classic country station his mother had played when he had been a boy. One of her favorite songs was playing.

“Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side…”

* * *

Once he got to his apartment, Mikey lost all sense of time. It didn’t matter anymore. He had left his laptop in his car and didn’t want to see all the emails from concerned clients asking about finding new representation. The campaign was over. His parents hadn’t called even after what they surely saw on the TV. And he certainly couldn’t talk to Bree—or even face her. Her disappointment would be unbearable. He badly wanted to drink. He was thankful that he couldn’t bring himself to go to the liquor store.

Though he couldn’t see the sun rise or fall through his curtains, he felt like days had passed since the hospital. He just sat. Sometimes his mind showed him images of the local press reporting on his collapse and the campaign’s implosion. Sometimes he saw pictures of his parents going about their social lives as their associates conspicuously avoided his name in conversation. Most often, he saw Bree desperately holding the campaign together with prayers and press releases. He wished her the best. He couldn’t do it any more.

* * *

He heard a knock at the door. He ignored it. It was probably a canvasser for Pruce or one of the ballot initiatives. They would go away eventually.

The knock came again. Mikey couldn’t move. He was sure whoever was out there had already judged him. He couldn’t do anything to impress them.

“Mikey,” the person at the door shouted. “I know you’re in there. You know I have a key…” It was Bree. She was angry. He thought about trying to hide before realizing how childish that would have been. He heard Bree’s key in the lock.

“Have you just been sitting here in the dark?” she scolded as she let herself in. “I’ve been trying to call you for the last thirty minutes. I went to the hospital, and they told me you had checked yourself out. What do you think—” She saw her brother sitting silently. She sat down her purse and sat by him.

“I’m sorry,” Mikey muttered.

“Hey, don’t worry about it.” She put her arm around his shoulders in an awkward attempt at warmth. “I was just scared when I couldn’t find you.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m just glad you’re alright.”

They sat in silence for a long moment. Neither of them had ever been taught how to handle this. They had been taught how to fight fear, how to power through pain. Never how to feel it.

“Mikey…” Bree said quietly. She was using all of her effort to form her emotions into words. “Um…”

With nothing left to prove, Mikey hugged his sister. She hugged him back. In that instant, they didn’t need words.

“I’m sorry…” Bree continued as she instinctively held back her tears.

“It’s okay—”

“No, it’s not okay. Thank you, but no. I’m sorry for overworking you. I’m sorry for ignoring you when you tried to talk to me. I heard your words, but I didn’t listen for your feelings. I was scared to. I just tried to fix it. I thought that—all of this was what we were supposed to do.”

“I know. I did too.” They were sharing the same secret. “So, what happens to the campaign now? I’m sure you’ve been working overtime since I imploded.”

Bree caught the self-deprecation in her brother’s words. “Hey,” she said with protective anger. “Don’t say that. You didn’t implode. You let go. And I’m proud of you. The campaign doesn’t matter right now. You can decide what to do about it later.”

It felt like a weight was lifted from his lungs. He breathed freely for the first time he could remember.

“Mikey, are you okay?”

There was the question again. But it sounded different this time. Bree wasn’t asking it like she was expecting him to say his next line. She was asking to understand. To listen.

“I…” Mikey wanted to meet his sister in her honesty. It took all of the little strength he had left to say the words he had to say. “I don’t know.”

Even in this unfamiliar vulnerability, he was afraid of what Bree would say. Saying he didn’t know was saying nothing. It didn’t give her anything to fix. It was only a confession.

“That’s okay.” Her voice told him he had no need for a pardon. “When you figure it out, I’ll be here for you.”

Looking at his sister in the darkness, Mikey saw someone he had never seen before. It was still Bree, but it was like they were meeting each other for the first time. Not a fragile fallen angel and a wonder woman of steel. Just two people who saw each other’s broken hearts and loved each other anyway. Just a brother and a sister.

They sat in silence for another long moment before Bree stood up and walked to the curtains. “Mind if I open these? We need some light.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

When she opened the curtains, the amber sunlight of late afternoon peeked through the window. Behind her head, Mikey saw a butterfly fly through the light. The soft warmth that fell on his skin felt like Sandra’s smile.